Parse Expires HTTP Header

Question

Hello,
I'm writing a HTTP-Proxyserver and I want to compare the cached Expires-Header with the actual date, so I need to convert the Header Object which I get from "httpclient" (jakarta) to a date Object. I tried the following:
/** Expires Header format. */
private final static DateFormat expiresFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss 'GMT'");
/** Expires header as a date. */
private Date expires;
Header expires = method.getResponseHeader("Expires");
// Parse the expires header.
try
  this.expires = expiresFormat.parse(expires.toString());
catch (ParseException e)
  logger.fatal("Bad date format in header: "+expires);
  throw new IllegalArgumentException(
    "Bad date format in header: "+expires);
...I get an Exception "Exception in thread "Thread-1" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Bad date format in header: Expires: Wed, 01 Jan 2020 01:01:01 GMT and I really don't know why :-/
I've tried so many "formats", but hmm, nothing worked so far :-/
greetings,
Johannes

Answer 1

Yes, but oh well, it doesn't work. Now I even tried
/** Expires Header format. */
private final static DateFormat expiresFormat = new
SimpleDateFormat(
"'Wed, 01 Jan 2020 01:01:01 GMT'");
That is illogical.
SimpleDateFormat takes a pattern. That isn't a pattern.
Presumably you intend to escape the entire thing perhaps? But then what exactly is it supposed to be parsing then?
And there is at least one bug with escaping so there could be others.
My suggestion was to stop escaping everything by removing the elements that you were already escaping. That would leave you just with a regular pattern.